


a little bit of light

by jehoney



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Depression, Drug Use, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Marijuana, Mother-Son Relationship, Other, Recreational Drug Use, Teenage Rebellion, Underage Drinking, Vomiting, connor is 14, general bad teen behaviour, i guess?, please don't mix alcohol and weed it's so bad, so there's this bit in a cut song, this is that, where cynthia talks about finding connor passed out in a park, whiteying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 09:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11288928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehoney/pseuds/jehoney
Summary: Ten fifteen in the evening. A mother finds her son, unconscious, but alive, in the shadows of the park he used to play in. He's almost too old for her to bear his weight, but she tries. She'll keep on trying if it kills her.The February wind blows cold.((aka, a cut song was posted offering exposition, so I wrote a fic))





	a little bit of light

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't listened to 'a little bit of light', then do that now: https://youtu.be/PQMaIlAezZ0
> 
> in the song cynthia mentions "the missing kid found passed out in the park" so this is that, basically
> 
> please please p l e a s e don't mix alcohol and weed it is so fuckin bad for you as this fic demonstrates
> 
> enjoy??

Nine-thirty in the evening. Four boys crowd around a rusty swingset in the centre of a tired, empty park. The February wind blows cold.   
  
Four figures, two emptied two-litre bottles of cider, a third of cheap vodka propped against the metal frame. The flicker of a single lighter protests against the chill.  
  
Connor Murphy doesn't want to be there.  
He's been feeling that a lot, lately, seemingly everywhere he goes, which makes him wonder just where it is he does want to be after all. He's cold, but his head tells him that's his own stupid fucking fault, for choosing his denim jacket over the dumb quilted one his mom got him for when they went skiing over Christmas. He fucking hates skiing.  
  
He's cold, the tips of his fingers kind of numb, but it's not too bad, because he's starting to like the lack of sensation, and though it hasn't reached his core (and can't, unless he wants to do something really stupid), the alcohol is going some way to dampening whatever's inside him. So he picks up the glass bottle, and swigs, almost choking at the taste.  
  
Connor Murphy doesn't want to be there, he tells himself, as he watches the other boys push the swing until it wraps itself around the bar in a tangle of chains. It's the kind of mindless destruction he could probably get behind, right on brand, what with his vandalisation of school property and everything, but he's feeling kind of dizzy, head swilling, so leans against the bar instead, and watches.   
  
He only really knows one of them: Noah. They met in detention two weeks ago, Connor for storming out of his chemistry class, Noah for fighting, bonding over their mutual incapability to adapt to high school, the way they stick out at the sharp edges. Connor thinks more of his edges are turned inwards than Noah. They stab at his insides.   
  
(In a year, Noah will be permanently excluded. Connor won't think about him, other than when he remembers this night.)  
  
So there's Noah, with his hair buzzed close to his skull, fourteen and a pocket version of his elder brother, who holds a lighter to the rubber swingseat and watches it melt. Connor can't remember his name, only that he walks with this kind of sloping gait, and his teeth are all crooked when he smiles. And finally, Dale, and Connor remembers this name because it's like something out of a fucking cowboy movie, and the image of the stretched out eighteen year old, that laughs harshly at the dripping plastic, on the back of a horse, lassoo in hand, is almost too ridiculous to bear. Dale and Noah's brother are supposed to be best friends, but Connor's not sure whether this is what best friends do - drink in parks and fuck up kids play equipment. Then again, Connor's never had one, so how should he know?  
  
Connor doesn't really like Dale. Or Noah's brother, or Noah, for that matter. They scare him, though he'd die before admitting it, because as much as he's one for late night anti social behaviour, he's still got rounded edges to his words, and a big-ass house and both parents that take him skiing in the holidays, no matter how much he hates it. He hasn't told Noah about this, but then he hasn't told Noah much about anything - his weirdly emo taste in music, the fact he still likes to read, the way he's started to cut up his arms because the sharp pain makes the tangle in his brain a bit quieter. He doesn't think Noah would understand. He doesn't think anyone would understand.  
  
He thinks Noah would probably rip the shit out of him for it, because even though Connor's been gradually gaining inches, he's stretched out thin like a beanstalk, and Noah's got this compacted aggression that shoots out through his fists, and Connor is fucking freakish by all accounts, so who could blame him.  
  
His forearms itch. He scratches, pavlovian, and finds red on his numbed fingertips.  
  
"Yo, Murphy!"  
  
Connor blinks his eyes back into focus, and sees Noah beckoning to him from the jungle gym where they've now carved obscenities into the paint, and are huddled around as Dale rolls a spliff.   
  
"You want some?"  
  
He nods, and pushes himself off the metal frame, and the vodka's starting in now, heightening the fizzing of the cider into a swirling that makes him slightly seasick. Considering the bottle still in his hand, he sets it down and walks over in his best impression of someone far less gone than he is. They haven't eaten since lunch, because he told his mom he was going to Noah's straight from school and their aimless wandering ended them here, so he attributes it to that, alcohol on an empty stomach, because the last thing he wants to be known as is a lightweight  
  
"This your first time?" Noah's brother asks, with something malicious behind his eyes, and Connor shakes his head, as he props himself against a ladder of metal bars. He's not lying this time, either, because his first time was last summer, when he realised that everything was nicer with a kind of pot- induced veil over it all, and he didn't have to worry about the static in his brain so much.   
  
So he wants some now, because the rushing in his head is having the opposite effect than the numbness he wants, everything's blurred and buzzing and he needs to counter it, put it on hold.  
  
The spliff comes to him, and he fills his lungs with warmth, and Dale lets out an impressed sound that gives him a sick stab of confidence as he exhales.  
  
"Stoner in the making, there." he says, and Connor smirks.  
  
"If he can hold out with the amount of booze already in him, sure." Noah's brother mutters, and Connor's not sure what he means, but he's feeling (or rather not feeling) the numbness, finally, as it creeps up from his extremities, but at the same time the dizziness remains, pulling the world backwards and forwards under his unsteady feet. When he's smoked before, he feels lifted, and it's the one time lately that he's been able to laugh like he used to, but this time, whether it's the cold or the people or what, he feels weighed down, so heavy that he actually ends up sliding down the metal bars to sit on the freezing tarmac, leaning against the structure for support.  
  
He can hear them talking, but it's like they're on the other side of frosted glass, passing in and out of range as the dizziness turns to lurching and fuck, something's gone wrong, they've either spiked him with some shit or it's messing with the alcohol because he can't move his limbs, and he's drifting between consciousness and something dark and unknown. The panic catches up with him in a delayed reaction, partly because he can make out their expletives of worry, partly because his chest rising and falling and the rapid pound of blood in his ears feels detached, like he's listening to the machinations of someone else's body as it tries to figure out what the fuck he's put into it, and then the sudden cold hits but he doesn't even have the wherewithal to draw his arms around him, they're out of his control.   
  
He doesn't know what the fuck is happening. He might die, cold and drunk, in a park he doesn't know with people he doesn't like, at fourteen years old and maybe, the thought strikes him, maybe that's what the universe has decided something like him deserves in the end, an unknown death caused by his own stupid attempt to escape whatever's wrong with him.   
  
The lurch is in his stomach now, and the bile rising in his throat only gives him enough time to turn to the side before the nausea overtakes him and he's retching, involuntary, unable to stop even when he's emptied the contents of his almost already empty stomach onto the ground, and when he can pull his head back, his hand won't come up to wipe at his mouth so he hunches, heavily, passing in and out of awareness of his own state.  
  
And then, he just passes out.  


* * *

  
  
Ten in the evening. Three boys crowd around a fourth, slumped, out cold against the rusty jungle gym of a tired, empty park. The February wind blows cold.   
  
"What the fuck do we do?" the youngest asks, and there's a naïve panic in his barely-broken voice.  
  
"Where does he live, anyway?" the second asks, and the third shakes his head.  
  
"We can't take him home, look at him."  
  
He's tall for his age, in that newly adolescent way that stretches skin over growing bones without giving it time to adjust. His hair is tousled, and an auburn brown. His face is white.  
  
The third gingerly reaches into the boy's pocket, pulling out his phone. He checks the emergency contacts.   


* * *

  
  
Cynthia Murphy has set her son's curfew for ten, and knows, despite whatever else he's been getting up to nowadays, that he'll keep it.  
  
She swirls the glass of red wine in her hand, one eye on the book in her lap, the other on the front door as she waits.The buzzing of her mobile cuts through the silence, making her start in surprise.   
  
It's Connor's number, but it's not Connor calling, the voice deeper and older.  
  
"Uh... Mrs Murphy? Are you Connor's mom?"  
  
"Who is this?"  
  
Anxiety grips her heart tightly, and she sits forward.   
  
"It, uh... Look, Connor needs you to come and pick him up. It's the park, on uh... Robinson Street."  
  
"What--"  
  
But they've hung up, and she sits, breath quickening, mind running through the million possibilities of Connor, dead on the ground, Connor, mugged or run over or attacked, and before she has time to grab a coat, she takes her car keys and is out into the night.   


* * *

  
  
Ten fifteen in the evening. A mother finds her son, unconscious, but alive, in the shadows of the park he used to play in. He's almost too old for her to bear his weight, but she tries. She'll keep on trying if it kills her.  
  
The February wind blows cold.


End file.
